Learning to Breathe

      THE GIRL WHO SOLD A BASKET        Every morning my father made me go to the station at Deoli and sell the baskets which my younger sister and I would make. Deoli is a very small station and only a few trains would pass by. Father had met with an accident a year ago, and ever since he has been unable to work at the wood factory. Selling baskets was the only means left for us to earn money. With what little we earned, we managed to survive.        I was only fourteen then, and being the chirpy sort, I found it troublesome to sell baskets each day. The Deoli station hardly had any excitement; a tea stall, a fruit vendor, a newspaper seller and the office of the station master. That was all. No one got on the trains that passed, and no one got off.        Summer was the only time I enjoyed my duty. Deoli itself didn't bring any change, but the trains did. The passengers were more and there would be more noise and more happenings. The trains would stop for the same ten minutes